Austin lost an icon Tuesday.
Tom Spencer is credited with starting the local PBS station here in Austin. I believe I met Tom doing his PBS interview show, but I got to know him much better when he served as leader of our local interfaith organization now known as I-ACT.
Most interfaith organizations attempt to be inclusive, but they are built on a Christian understanding of religion. At best they include the three Abrahamic religions, but the vast richness of other world religions is often left unexplored.
iACT had begun under another name as a group of Christians wanting to do service projects in Austin. As the group opened their hearts and minds to other worldviews the question arose how could religions reach across their differences.
Tom was knowledgeable enough about world religions to realize many of them do not worship what the Abrahamic religions think of as God. Tom was also wise enough to realize religions would never find unity simply by sharing their common beliefs and practices. Instead, Tom realized that what healthy religions has in common is the desire to be better people and to make this world a better place. It is that compassion that reaches across religious divides.
Today iACT not only celebrates world religions, it also comes together to repair homes for people who cannot afford it. They have a wonderful program for refugees. They even have a financial literacy program for youth. They are a lighthouse of compassion shining through what can be very dark storms.
Tom had the soul of a gardener. He used to say he was raised Catholic and born Buddhist. He found the sacred in the most ordinary of places. When asked to speak about the sacred, Tom would sometimes ask people if they had had a treasure box as a child. He would then ask what those treasures had been.
People invariably remembered that the treasures of their youth had been ordinary things like rocks, and feathers, and shells. I think Tom’s point was that the sacred is all around us and we can always return to our spiritual home base if we open our eyes, ears and hearts to the sacred shining through what seems ordinary. It also helps if we do not let religion get in the way of the love to which great religions call us.
Thank you, Tom Spencer. You will be sorely missed.